The Intangible Value of Art

From the sublime to the ridiculous, the world of art beckons us to rediscover its beauty, meaning and relevance.

The India Art Fair will open in Delhi in February 2025. The Mumbai Art Fair celebrated its second year in November 2024. The first edition of the Bengal Biennale is currently happening in Kolkata and Santiniketan. The next Kochi Biennale has been announced for 2026. Major and not so major cities in India and around the world will host a slew of art biennales and festivals. There will be exhibitions and art openings, museum shows and talks, auctions and sales which will grab headlines. And through all the noise, the lay person, even one as astute as a reader of The Perfect Voice will shake their head and say, “I don’t understand art.” Equally likely to be heard on the other end of the spectrum is someone looking at an abstract painting and sneering, “My two-year-old could have done that.”

Between this befuddlement and disdain lies reality. Visual art is something we have all engaged with joyfully as children. Who among us has not doodled with a pencil or coloured inside the lines with a crayon or chalk? Or enjoyed illustrations in a picture book? As Picasso put it, “Every child is an artist; the problem is staying an artist when you grow up.” Somewhere along the way, innocent delight is replaced by the mystique and opacity of ‘Art’ with a capital A.

In this era of Chat GPT, a search for “What is art?” will lead to this succinct explanation: “Art is a form of human expression that uses various media to convey ideas, emotions, and beauty.” Further refinement will tell you that “Art is a visual object or experience that is intentionally created to express imagination or skill. It can be a physical medium, such as a painting or sculpture, or an experience.” The Greek philosopher Aristotle, wrote, “The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.” French Impressionist Edgar Degas said, “Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.” Arthur Schopenhauer, the 19th century “artist’s philosopher” advised, “Treat a work of art like a prince. Let it speak to you first.” But art historian Ananda Coomaraswamy stated, “Art is nothing tangible.” As you begin to groan, you may also find someone who tells you, “Art is anything you want it to be.”

None of these views adequately capture a field that is as vast as it is deep, spanning the range from the sublime to the ridiculous. Art is a profession like any other, with a language of its own. No artist functions in a vacuum; whether intentional or not, the work of the artist reflects the complexities and contradictions of his or her time in history. From Gandhara sculptures to Subodh Gupta’s sculptures with stainless steel kitchen utensils, from Pahari miniatures to V S Gaitonde’s non-objective colourscapes, from 8th century Indian stepwells to Frank Gehry’s Bilbao Guggenheim, the spectrum of what constitutes art continues pushing the boundaries of convention. It is the artist’s engagement with the intellectual discourse of a society which makes their creations relevant, rendering art and culture inseparable.

There is an entire ecosystem through which artwork filters to the connoisseur, the collector, and the general public. There are gallerists, dealers, critics, scholars, historians, curators and auctioneers. Behind the scenes are art material suppliers, framers, conservators and restorers. Like the fable of the elephant and the blind men, each has their own view of what Art is. This column will attempt to peel the onion, that is Art, through a series of articles that aim to demystify it so that you can appreciate, and perhaps even enjoy it once again - visually, aesthetically, technically, politically, intellectually, spiritually. It is, in that sense, whatever you want it to be.

At its most reductionist, art is paint on canvas, ink on paper, it can be made of clay or metal, stone or light. It can be a landscape, a portrait, a splotch of colour. Sometimes, it is nothing more than the emptiness contained within a potter’s creation and yet, art is much more than the sum of its parts. The late Akbar Padamsee, whose practice consisted largely of paintings, drawings, and some sculpture, said, “Art for me, is to express the invisible.” Shilpa Gupta, a contemporary multi-media artist, who uses video, lights, and rarely the more conventional paper and canvas, says her work is “a cross between intellectual and experiential” and her process involves “problem-solving towards reproducing an experience.” Vastly different visions with vastly varying languages which may or may not connect with a viewer. When you see a Raja Ravi Varma painting of Saraswati or a Jamini Roy work, you may feel reassured that it is something that makes sense, being rooted in known mythology and conventional notions of a formalist tradition. In every instance, when you are drawn to a work of art, it isn’t just the physical entity that pulls you in, it is, in the words of Leonardo da Vinci, the “man and the intention of his mind” which you seek. It is art that preserves the souls of civilizations. Ultimately, art is about connection and finding resonance with something bigger than yourself.

(The writer is an architect, author, editor, and artist. Her column meanders through the vibrant world of art, examining exhibitions, offering critiques, delving into theory and exploring everything in between and beyond.)